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Chuck Berry sang about ridin’ around in the automobile with “no particular place to go.” If you wanted to drop off the radar and step out into the great wide open, the car was a good place to start.

But times have changed. So have our vehicles.

These days, cars are able to do many things. Keeping an eye on you is on that list as well.

The increasing number of electronic sensors constantly records not just all the happenings under the hood but also your interactions with the vehicle — speed, driving patterns, braking.

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Similarly, the paired smartphone or the in-built navigation system keep record of where you go, who you call, and often by inference, what you do and buy (the trip to Walmart or the outlet mall in Buffalo might say more about you than you can imagine).

True, we expect our cars to be smarter. We want our car to be able to tell us when it’s going to break down before it does, when it’s up for maintenance, and literally drive us around without intervention.

So, in a way we have surrendered our proverbial freedom for convenience. Or have we?

The murmur around the legality and privacy of in-car data has been steadily growing over the last year.

With all the recent high profile recalls involving General Motors, and Toyota before that, lawyers are beginning to wonder if at some point courts could begin requesting access to vehicle data.

According to a law professor quoted in a Business Insider article, the vehicular environment could be no different from that of a bank or the Internet. If you did something wrong or if some information from that particular environment could determine legal proceedings, arms of the law could indeed reach into your dashboard.

Automakers, such as Ford, have been up front in stating that they would make such data available to law enforcement agencies, if needed. GM has similar disclaimers for its OnStar telematics systems, specifying that it retains the right to “review the data for product safety or security purposes, to protect the safety of you or others, or to help maintain the proper operation of your vehicle.”

Vehicle owners are most likely to accept, even if reluctantly or somewhat forcibly, the use of vehicle data in complex legal battles that serve a greater good or in cases involving some form of criminality.

But the use of data for other purposes — for example, marketing or insurance — is where things may get a little testy.

GM ran into some trouble in 2011 for not checking with its customers first before allowing its OnStar system to begin collecting and sharing vehicle data with third-parties in order to improve its services.

The Detroit automaker later clarified that it will only be using the data anonymously and any information that identifies a specific vehicle or owner will need clear consent before it leaves the system.

Customer consent sounds great on paper but the problem is, as we have seen in online services, collection and analysis of user data is essential to improving any service.

Most people love the Facebook or Amazon experience because both these services closely track our habits and gently nudge us toward things that we might find useful.

Similarly, if we want our cars to be intelligent, there has to be some give and take.

Personally, I think the risk lies in two fronts — what the automakers may be actually doing with some of that data and, like much of our other connected experience, the level of exposure we’ll have to malcontents and hackers.

As I mentioned in an earlier column, automakers and legislators are already seriously considering the second issue.

The former is still up in the air and, at least for the short term, automakers will use the opt-in approach with some degree of variability between themselves.

However, as vehicles become more entrenched in the matrix, there may be need for some rules of the road.

U.S. Senator Al Franken, along with others, has already started the conversation around vehicle data ownership and consent south of the border.

I think Canadian legislators and industry insiders need to start looking into it as well in light of our connected future.

Kumar Saha is a Toronto-based automotive analyst with the global research firm Frost &amp; Sullivan

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